The new release Mustard After Dinner: An Anthology Of Fighting Kites offers up some of the best post-rock recently produced in the United Kingdom. The material here is spry and inventive, as well as certainly compelling for fans of stuff like Trans Am, Tortoise, or any number of Dischord bands from the late Nineties. The London-based group were not making punk, or even post-punk, but the tracks collected here are closer (in spirit) to those genres than to anything too pretentious.
While opener "Anthony Gankin" eventually works up a formidable head of steam, far better are "Bowling Alone" and "Slowly Slowly", tunes that owe as much to those artists I referenced above, as they do to any number of prog or folk-rock genre pioneers. The players here -- Neil Debnam, Luke Johnson, David Stewart, and Daniel Fordham -- crank through the material on this anthology with real attention to texture and tone. And while "Northern Territory" briefly suggests a harder path that the band could have been pursued, "Health & Efficiency (Vlaams Tapes Version)" shifts things down-tempo and allows for what could be considered noodling. Still, if it's noodling, it's at least noodling with purpose. Very rarely on this set does the energy flag, with the players throughout the various eras of Fighting Kites exhibiting the kind of improvisational sense that only the best jazz players usually have. That the band is cohesive, is also worth stressing, with stuff like "Cat is Egg (Resonance FM Session)" positively skipping as each piece of the musical machine slips into place. The tune is, like many here, unassuming and grounded in an outlook that is one that I'd link back to that of progressive music, but without the bombast or pretension.
Mustard After Dinner: An Anthology Of Fighting Kites is out now via Audio Antihero.
More details on Fighting Kites via the band's official Facebook page.
[Photo: Fighting Kites]